Okay, we have seen that merciful intentions do not mean that the results actually are merciful. Being soft-hearted and soft-headed at the same time doesn’t help anybody. But of course — and here comes the point of this post — being hard-headed and hard-hearted is also a spiritual disaster. God calls us to be hard-headed and tender-hearted. In your thinking be adults, Paul tells us. And be ye kind, tender-hearted.
What should Christians focus on when the intention is to accomplish true mercy? Here is a quick list — and I will simply list them without any cautions. This is not because caution is unnecessary, but rather to rebuild my ethos with anybody who has come to think that I want any possible expression of mercy to be counterproductive. It is not that I want that — it is just that most of them are, and true mercy requires that we say something. It is not enough to blunder in the strength of “what we thought we knew.”
Like anything in this fallen world, the list below can be abused. But I believe that it is much harder for this kind of thing to be abused than it is for the feel good gestures de jure to be abused.
First, treat your tithe as a minimum floor for your giving. Learn to think of tithes and offerings together. God has blessed you. As John Wesley put it, earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can. And when you give above and beyond the tithe, you must do it as an expression of gratitude, and not of guilt. God hates it when we give out of guilt. Give because God has been kind to you, and you want to be kind in the same kind of way. As you are faithful with little, God will entrust you with more. This is not a “prosperity gospel.” We do not give to get. We give to get in order to be able to give again. John Bunyan once made this point pithily — “There was a man, some thought him mad. The more he gave, the more he had.”
Second, as you look for places to invest your offerings, look in two categories. First, global justice is impossible apart from the spread of the gospel, so invest in God-honoring evangelism. Second, if your Christian community is like most, there are probably families in it who have special gifts when it come to adoption. If someone in your church is adopting a Romanian orphan, help them out financially. Bringing a child from an orphanage to a godly home here is simply a good thing, and you can see the effects of your giving.
Third, if you have the resources, the emotional gifts, and the opportunity, then take in children this way yourself. I am extremely grateful to be a pastor in a congregation where this kind of thing is not unusual — we have a number of Ethiopian kids, Americans now, worshipping together with us every Lord’s Day. The families doing this are extraordinarily gifted, but it takes a lot — so help them out.
Fourth, a number of years ago our church decided to stop funding a jillion missionaries at 25 dollars a pop, and invest all our missions giving in one place. When that was fully funded, we could move on to a second one. So now one of the elders of Christ Church is a Bible translator for the Bakwe in the Ivory Coast. And we have just recently begun some serious contact with some brothers in Myanmar. The key in both of these is ongoing personal contact, friendship, and not just a “tag, you’re it” kind of involvement.
Fifth, apart from the spiritual work of Bible translation in the Ivory Coast, we have also started a micro-financing work to get small businesses established and growing there.
There are other things we can seek out to do, obviously, but this is the kind of list that will keep us busy for a good bit, and has the tangible advantage of being visible to us.